Bottle Of Jack
by lunastars
Summary: For a long time now Mel's determination has been fuelled by feelings of hatred, but the thought of finding out the truth and getting justice is what helps her to cope. She follows three words: Breathe. Focus. Repeat. Now it's time to add drink to the list. - Set between season 2 & 3


**I have no explanation for this and I'm kind of on the fence about it.**

**I really should be writing some original stuff for my course, but there's this thing I have to elaborate on and I'm avoiding doing it for as long as possible because it's stupid, so I wrote some fanfiction instead.**

**This is set between seasons 2 + 3 where the group are still travelling after Hershel's farm but haven't quite reached the prison. In this they've set up camp in an abandoned house.  
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><p>Daryl moved through camp, subtly checking on everyone as he moved. The tips of his fingers skimmed Carol's shoulder as he passed and he even offered one of his pillows to Lori so she could prop it behind her back. Although we secured both floors of the house we kept to the two biggest rooms on the first floor. Everyone was spread out into their own spaces, families and close friends sticking together. I had found a spot near the archway to the room for me and Daryl while he finished up giving the place a last once over. I had my back against the wall as I watched him. My knees were drawn up with a blanket I'd found upstairs thrown over them.<p>

"It all look good?" I questioned as he came to stand in front of me.

He nodded, tugging on the strap of his bow to pull it up his back a little. "Should be a good for a couple of days at least."

"Who's on watch?"

"T-Dog," he said as he looked over his shoulder at the Grimes' family. "And Rick is about to go out to help him."

"Are you going out at any point?"

He glanced at me. "No, Rick says I should rest up, been doin' too much apparently."

I smiled a little at that. "Good, I'm thirsty."

I got up, letting the blanket fall to the floor by my feet. I stepped over it and tugged on the front of Daryl's vest to get him to follow me. I led the way to the kitchen, the other room we were going to use. A lot of the supplies we found around the house were in there. We had raided the cupboards and pantry to find lots of other food that we piled up. I went straight of the liquor cabinet in the corner of the room though and pulled out a bottle of Jack.

"Ain't got nothing to water that down with," he pointed out.

"I'm not that fussy," I said as I opened up the bottle and handed it to him.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" He pointed at me with the bottle. "You might not be fussy but I'm gonna need an excuse to get drunk here."

"Let's play a game," I suggested, skipping over the obvious fact the world alone was a reason to drink. "Our game."

"Ain't we a bit old for that?"

"You wanted an excuse," I said as I took the bottle back from him. I held it up ready for him to take. "You remember the rules?"

"Like I could forget them," he mumbled as he leaned against the island counter.

We had been young. Merle was pissed at their dad so he had stolen one of his bottles of Jack. Daryl and I had found him with the full bottle down by the river in our usual spot. We had moved away from it a little and settled down in the grass. We were teenagers then, there about. Merle had been in and out of trouble but he was finally back. Things between him and Daryl were never the same but they stuck together against their dad. None of us were of age except Merle and I guess you could say Daryl and I were at that age where we were 'impressionable'. We wanted an excuse for Merle to not drink the whole bottle and the only way he would allow us to drink was to have an excuse. That's when we created the game.

You ask a yes or no question and if the other person gave a negative answer they had to drink. So for a question like "did you ever kill anyone?" the negative answer would be yes, but to a question like "have you ever loved someone?" the negative answer would be no, of course any of these could be argued against. It was our way of getting Merle to talk and not get as drunk.

"I'll go first," I told him before he could get out of it. "You ready?"

He snatched the bottle from my hand like I knew he would. When we used to play this I would always start with a question that would force him to take a drink just to spite all the times he and Merle had teased me. At that time Daryl couldn't handle his drink as well as he could now.

"Shoot," he said.

"Why did you kill him?"

I knew from the way his eyes flashed that he thought I was talking about his old man, but then that looked changed. I knew that story already, that wasn't the one I was curious about.

"I…" He finally stuttered out. "I thought the rules were yes or no questions?"

"I already know you did it." He didn't say anything. From the panic on his face I knew he was trying to figure out a quick way to get out of this. "Merle told me he did it and that's how I know it was you. Merle is a lot of things but he never bragged about something like that. He was never that honest."

"Mel, I don't know what you want me to say."

"I want you to tell me why."

He took drink and settled the bottle on the counter top. "It was an accident. Merle was going to do it and I stopped him but everything went wrong."

"I wasn't even allowed to see him." I grabbed the bottle and took a drink. I didn't want to think about how messed up he must have been for me to not be allowed to see him. I didn't want to think about what they must have done to him.

"How long have you known?"

"Merle came to me a couple of weeks after it happened." I held the neck of the bottle lightly and swayed it from side to side. "Couldn't handle how broken up I was apparently."

"He wanted you to move on," Daryl mumbled as he gripped the bottom of the bottle to stop me from swinging it.

"I was going to marry him."

"Eric was going to have you killed."

It was a good thing that Daryl had his hand underneath the bottle because my hand slackened on it and it dropped down. He just about managed to stop it from falling sideways out of his hand.

"Why would you even say something like that?"

"Because it's true." I looked at him, waiting for him to go on, to explain. Eric would never do something like that. I fingered the ring and the chain it hung on around my neck. Daryl's eyes watched my fingers as he continued on, "I was round your place, checkin' on ya when the letter arrived. I was going to give it to ya but it looked important so I figured I'd do it another day, when you were ready to face it."

I let go of the ring. "I never got a letter."

"Merle opened it up," he explained, setting the bottle back down on the counter top again. "It was from some lawyer. Apparently some aunt of yours passed away and left a whole heap of money to ya, said it was 'cause she had no children and you were her god daughter, the closest thing to a real daughter she ever had."

"So you didn't give me the letter because you didn't want me to have money?" I asked, confused as to why this was relevant.

"The letter came from the firm that Eric worked at," Daryl explained. "He was so messed up because Merle never trusted him and he went to get some answers. He was beating the shit out of him when I showed up."

"Then Eric would have said anything to make him stop!"

"He brought up bringing the wedding forward the same day that letter was posted and it was posted from the same area of the firm that Eric worked in, he would have seen the letter," Daryl rushed on. "While Merle was hitting him he said what was yours was his and then… Let's just say we got the truth out of him. It was gonna be staged so he would get your money. I mean, a man who earns as much as he does, did he ever ask you for a prenup?"

"He trusted me," I argued.

"You had no job, what was to stop you from using all of his money?"

I shook my head, not wanting to believe it. "So how did he end up dead?"

"I managed to pull Merle off of him but that's when Eric pulled out the gun."

"_He_ was going to kill me?" I questioned, trying to get this all straight in my head.

"We all know you've had problems in the past, Mel."

I grabbed the bottle from him and took a drink, then another, then another and then another. I closed my eyes as I swallowed the last of it down and let it warm me up. "I'm not suicidal."

"You were," he reminded. "That's all that would have mattered. Gun in your hand, nobody else in… Plus, who the hell knows what kind of people were in Eric's pocket."

"So what happened?" I asked as I hugged the bottle to my chest.

"He could barely stand up straight because of Merle so I tried to take the gun from him." He slouched a little against the counters. "I didn't expect him to fight back or be able to, the gun just went off."

"Why didn't you give me the letter? Why didn't you just tell me?"

"You were so broken up I couldn't do it, then the world went to hell and I promised myself that I wouldn't allow ya to carry that around with ya."

"But I did," I said angrily, pointing at him. "This whole time I thought _you_ did it, I was so angry at you and so angry at myself for wanting to protect you through all of this. How could I live with myself wanting to do that after what you did?"

"Why didn't you tell me you knew?"

"I was waiting for the right time, but then I see how well you fit in with these people now and when I brought you in here it was because I didn't think you deserved to fit in, to be happy."

"And now?"

"You're so stupid," I said, frustrated as I pushed the bottle into his chest. "I would have done _anything_ for you and Merle. You should have told me the truth, I would have believed you but instead you gave me all this time to hate you, to put Eric on a fucking pedestal."

I pulled the bottle away from him before he could say anything else and I took a drink. Before I could get as much as I wanted Daryl snatched the bottle from me and held it up out of the way. I contemplated reaching for it but I knew with the height difference I would never be able to get to it so I just settled on glaring.

"I should've told ya," he admitted as he finally brought the bottle down and held it by his side. "But I did what I did to protect ya and I'm going to keep doing that whether ya want me to or not."

"Then the least you can do is let me have a drink."

I took the bottle out of his hand and this time when I took a drink I walked away from him too.


End file.
